The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventors, to the extent it is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description that may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the present disclosure.
Mobile devices such as laptop computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), digital video devices, cellular phones, digital cameras, and portable audio devices may be referred to collectively as “host devices”. Host devices may be equipped with interface modules to accommodate integrated circuit (IC) cards. The interface modules are commonly designated as Secure Digital (SD) interface modules, and the cards as SD cards.
Two international standards for SD cards include the SD memory standard for memory devices and the SD input/output (SDIO) standard for input/output devices. The SDIO standard is an extension of the SD memory card standard and covers both input/output functions and memory functions. SD cards may be peripherals compliant with the SD standard. SDIO cards may be peripherals compliant with the SDIO standard. SD memory cards may include flash memory or any other type of non-volatile memory.
SDIO may expand functionality of a host device and may include serial, modem, camera, global positioning system (GPS), or wireless local area network (WLAN) cards. In contrast, SD is generally only used for storage expansion. A host device with a SDIO interface module may accept both SDIO and SD memory cards, but a host device with only a SD interface may not necessarily accept SDIO cards. A host device may be specifically required to be “SDIO-capable” in order to be compatible with SDIO cards.
Referring now to FIG. 1, a SDIO WLAN card 10 may provide a host device 12 with a wireless connection to a WLAN network. The SDIO card 10 may include a radio frequency (RF) module 14 and RF antenna 16. The RF module 14 may be compatible with any of IEEE standards 802.11, 802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11h, 802.11n, 802.16, 802.20 and Bluetooth.
The SDIO WLAN card 10 may include an SDIO control module 20 that allows peripherals, which may be added to or may communicate with the SDIO WLAN card 10, to comply with the SDIO standard. The SDIO control module 20 may also control SD and SDIO applications within the host device 12. The host device 12 may include an interface module 22 having a bus 23. The bus 23 may include a control module 24 that communicates with the SDIO card 10 via a port 26. The control module 24 may communicate with WLAN application modules 30 within the host 12 via a driver module 31. The SDIO WLAN card 10 may include a buffer 34 and/or memory 36 to store data and/or processes that may be used to implement SDIO functions.